One of the giants on whose shoulders I stood is the “Father of Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO)”. He died on October 20 of this year at age 86. I met Dr. Bartlett in 1977 when I started my surgical residency at UC Irvine. He was the head of the burn center but was actively pursuing the development of a device that could enrich blood with oxygen and effectively take over the work of the lungs. That was Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation. The year before I got to Irvine Medical Center, he had his first survivor of this life support system, baby Esperanza (which means hope). I spent a year working under Dr. Bartlett and learned a great deal from him. I assisted him in often hooking up a patient to his machine that, since then, has saved thousands of lives and continues to do so yearly.
Dr. Bartlett was only four years my senior, as I had been in general practice for ten years before returning to school to become a surgeon. As our ages were not that far apart, I had a different relationship with Dr. Bartlett than my fellow residents, who were a decade younger.
ECMO then
ECMO now
My memories of Dr. Bartlett are filled with intensive surgical education, setting an example of how to do it the right way, and numerous lectures on why and when to do it. Although on one occasion we were doing an ECMO case together, he let me do a large part of it. At the time, there was a palace coup going on against the then chair of surgery, Dr. John E. Connolly, and Dr. Bartlett was one of the young “Turks” leading the charge. I recall being nervous during the case, although I had assisted ECMO cases before, I had never done that procedure before as primary surgeon, especially with the father of ECMO assisting. Assisting and doing are entirely different, especially since Dr. Bartlett was grilling me, not about ECMO, but about what the all resident staff thought about the effort to retire Dr. Connolly. But that was the only time Dr. Bartlett strayed into subjects outside of teaching surgery. In any case, the coup failed, but soon thereafter, Dr. Bartlett was recruited by his old alma mater and left for the University of Michigan Medical Center to become Section Head of General and Thoracic Surgery. There he developed the Surgical Critical Care Fellowship and Extracorporeal Life Support.
Dr. Bartlett’s contributions to surgery have been recognized by numerous awards, including the Medallion of Scientific Achievement from the American Surgical Association, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society of Critical Care Medicine, the Jacobson Award for Innovation from the American College of Surgeons, and many more, too numerous to mention. He also had several inventions which he never patented, believing that technology might benefit humanity and should not be treated as a source of income. Among the cleverest devices he invented was the incentive spirometer, which almost every surgical patient becomes acquainted with. It gives the patients a practical means to inflate their lungs after surgery, which helps to prevent pneumonia. Because of his high principles, he never profited from that clever device. He was very family-oriented toward his wife, Wanda, and their three children. He was quite the sailor, skier, and ice-skater, including organizing a hockey team he called “The Hockey Docs.” Additionally, he was a good bass violin and euphonium player. If that was not enough, he wrote two novels and a syllabus for his critical care residents.
I am thankful to Dr. Bartlett for all the knowledge and surgical skills he has imparted to me. He is truly one of the giants whose “Shoulders we Stand on,” enabling us to see further!